About a month ago, my favorite gym fairy (who, as mentioned, needs to be Best of Boston….) George descended upon my Saturday cardio class looking noticeably thinner than the week before. In the world of hard-core fitness (a world I now think I’m officially a part of), showing up thinner in less than seven days is like fucking Edward Scissor Hands and then going for a swim off the coast of Cuba… you are going to get attacked. To make matters worse, Georgie went ahead and teased the entire class by telling us that if we stayed for the second round of class (immediately following), he would tell us all how he shed 10lbs in 7 days. I have never seen so many people in a cardio class in my life.

The key to George’s sudden weight loss was a program called IsaGenix. Now, I’ve learned via Twitter that if you mention this product in ANY negative fashion, thousands of angry Isa-Twitterers will come out of the woodwork and Tweet you to death. I can only imagine what today’s Google Keyword search is going to do to me. (Hello, crazy IsaGenix people. Welcome to my blog. Now leave me alone.) The program is a “cleanse” which rids your body of the evil toxins that are weighing you down and keeping you from being the best possible person you can be. Actually what it is is a 9 day torture test to see whether or not normal people can live normal lives without food.

Like all stupid things in life: hammer pants, scrunchies, that time Coke fucked up and changed their formula, I needed to go ahead and try it. You know, just so I could blog about it. Had I been smart about it, I would have blogged during the actual cleanse, alas I did not. Mostly because cleansing turned me into a unique person who couldnt focus on benign tasks like sharing her life with twelve people.

For two days you drink some cleansing juice. Mine was “tropical berry” which, in IsaGenix land, is cousins with rancid organic apple juice. For two days at the beginning, and two days at the end you drink this juice and if you find yourself unbearably hungry, you are allowed an almond or two. How generous. The middle days (5) you drink two meal replacement shakes and then are allowed a 4-600 calorie meal– either as lunch or dinner. Think of it like a glorified SlimFast plan. During these nine days, I compiled a list of things that I was learning about myself through the cleanse. So here is is, Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I learned on an IsaGenix Cleanse:

1. Poo is Precious

I know. It is completely unladylike to talk about poo. So we wont. What we will talk about is what happens when you realize your rear functions have been… defunct… for more than four days. A girl who doesn’t believe in God starts saying prayers that the savior will send her a turd. After day five, the anxiety over the mass that is growing in your defunct belly becomes overwhelming, and you ask the hubs if he’ll just beat on you for a while. Lightly, of course.

The real kicker is when your meal replacement shakes give you Devious Gas. A rare breed that cannot be trusted unless one is seated on the cool promise of porcelain. Trust me on this, cherish your poo.

2. It’s the texture, not the flavor.

I actually learned this lesson years ago when I had to fast for an exploratory stomach surgery: hunger is nothing. I could go days without calories; it’s the longing for something in the mouth that becomes unbearable. I actually remember standing over the kitchen sink (during the fast) and chewing up stale loaves of bread and spitting them in the sink, just so I could remember what it was like to feel food. My dad accidentally caught me, and I dont think things have ever really been the same.

On day two of the cleanse, I had taken out nearly eight packs of gum. I was chewing the calorie equivalent of a Big Mac in increments of “Not a Significant Source of Nutrition or Calories”. They only say that because they dont know that some people use them as meal replacement.

As weakness turning to longing, I thought I was ready to lead a debate against religious activitists. You think your God is the reason and source of life? Wrong. It’s restaurant week. It’s gluttony and pleasure and fluffy carbohydrates. That’s what it’s all about. Ave Maria.

3. About your friends…

They only like you because you drink and because you eat. No one wants to be around a dieter. It’s a close second to a recovering alcoholic. (Sidenote: once you hit the 5-10 year mark of recovery, this doesn’t apply. We’re talking about alcondriacs– a breed of people who go to Betty Ford and emerge convinced that EVERYONE is an alcoholic. I don’t want anyone falling off the wagon, I just want them to shut the fuck up about it.)

For nine days I was a nobody. I wasn’t drunk enough to be honest, full enough to be tired, or engaged enough to care about anyone else. I was hungry. Plain and fucking simple. I wanted to eat babies. Covered in mayo. Fried.

Yum.

And now here I am. Maintaining. Drinking Devious Gas Shakes and playing poo roulette.

God Bless IsaGenix.